I've discovered the panorama function and I'm never looking back

The canal tour was the perfect activity for someone with a weird foot!! I met a friendly American lady on her way to South Africa - on a day long lay over in Amsterdam. Soooo friendly. Made me ever so slightly homesick. I then had a beer at a small pub near the train station and did some prime people watching.... Australian lady, older, and her Dutch lover/boyfriend/husband were chatting up the bar tender. They asked him all about his family and told him all about their collective visa issues in being a couple. There was also a cat sleeping next to me... and outside a man with two massive dreads down to his knees carefully picking up trash off the ground. Amsterdam is easily one of the finest people watching places I've been.

I'm very glad I had the chance to see such different Dutch cities - Rotterdam, Amsterdam, The Hague - and, this summer, Leiden. Definitely a fascinating place. The relationship Dutch people today have with colonialism especially fascinates and confuses me. Perhaps it's that they weren't as powerful as recently as the British and French or that so much of colonial control was enacted by private Dutch citizens and not just the government.... But for whatever reason I sensed more of a taboo and/or discomfort surrounding colonialism here than I have elsewhere in Europe. Then there's the sinter Klaas tradition.... Santa lives on Spain according to the Dutch (and I think Benelux region generally though I'm not sure). He comes up on his ship from Spain every year accompanied by short people with painted black faces. I was shocked to see SO SO many Christmas displays of Santa and people in black face. I had known about this tradition... but I had honestly thought that it's too racist to actually be carried out in public. I thought it was a sort if suppressed tradition bubbling up below the surface. Nope. I considered taking photos for the blog but i have no interest in having those photos. google it. These days the mainstream insists that Santas helpers aren't, as they appear to be, idiotic black people, but people who have gotten stuck in the chimney and thus have black coal all over their faces.

I loved being in the Netherlands in spite of this one aspect! Above all bit was so wonderful to spend time with Sofia :) I still need to write about our Sunday which included Bollywood, the free Gaza movement, a Dutch beach, and coffee. Later!